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8:30 Yoga Saturday…. then 10am WOD

I wanted to provide some insight after the article that came out inthe NY Times a couple of weeks ago discussing yoga and injuries asmany of you have raised it with me. There is actually much of thearticle that I agree with, but some of the guiding principles in it,namely that yoga is not for everyone, I strongly disagree.

The article suggested among other things that practicing yoga can leadto injuries as a result of practitioners taking the postures too fareither because their ego or their teacher prods them into in. On thispoint, I wholeheartedly agree. Yoga is a practice in the grey area,i.e. there are many ways to physically express the same pose. Much oflife, our own dualistic, right and left brains included, is one or theother, black or white, right or wrong, mine or yours. And while thereare certain universal truths, in yoga we practice discovering our ownpersonal truths. What is best for us, not because someone is loudlytelling us it is the case or because everyone else is doing it, butrather by developing a compassionate, non-judgmental, all-knowingvoice from within which simply says, “This is my personal truth, thisis what feels right to me, regardless of what others think.” My yogateacher, Alan Finger, often told us, “We are each 98.8 percent alike,the majority of the cellular make-up in our body is exactly the sameas everyone elses (2 eyes, one nose, one mouth, etc.), that said, the.2 percent which makes us different is extraordinarily powerful.” Itis in that .2 percent from which we derive our unique gifts, specialtalents, individual yearnings and it is up to us to uncover the .2percent. The analogy is that the Universe is made up of all creatureslarge and small, each of us has our own note to play, and when wehonor our own truth, our own unique voice, the music played in theUniverse is a symphony like no other! So we use our yoga practice todiscover what feels “right”, where our own edge is, regardless of whatanyone else in the room is doing and regardless of what the teacher istelling us. To determine the place in which we are not being lazy(unless that day calles for it! because we have been pushing too hardin other areas of our life and to create balance we need to take iteasy) and we are not overexerting ourselves (unless that day calls forit! because we have become complacent in other areas of our life andwe know we need to give ourselves a little kick to break through intonew territory or stir things up), but rather we are finding the placein which we can maintain a steady breath and feel the benefits of thephysical practice.

Please remember that teachers are merely guides. It is always OURyoga practice, which means it is up to us to determine what guidanceapplies and what does not. This can be tricky, as sometimes westubbornly want to cling to our patterns (the way we’ve “always” donesomething) and some of these patterns are healthy, some are not.Often a teacher can see things more clearly as an observer than we cancan see in ourselves, but only our innermost truthful intuition candetermine what is appropriate for us on a given day. Through yoga, wepractice building a mind/body connection and when the mind and bodyare in sync, like pieces of a puzzle, our intuition, our internalvoice, is unlocked to speak our truth (even when we may not want tohear it.) Our rational mind is not analytically determing a situationand our bodily impulses are not governing our motivations, insteadthey work in tandem arriving at the healthiest, most balanced place.Yoga is a “practice” because that which we practice on the mat, thenbecomes an ingrained approach in our inner cellular workings andwithout even knowing it we begin to apply this approach to our dailylives. It is for this reason we focus on being compassionate,nurturing, honest and non-judgmental first and foremost with ourselveson the mat.

An example of how to apply this in class is when you are doing sideangle pose (parsvakonasana) and you see other people in the room withtheir hand on the floor (extending their opposite arm up towards theceiling), rather than wanting to mimic them (which would result in adeep pain in your side or a crunch in the back or a painful stretch inthe hamstring) perhaps you use the assistance of a block, placing yourhand on it (anyone who has trouble asking for help in life isencouraged to incorporate the use of props, allowing the awakenedsense of accepting assistance and not feeling the need to always go italone), or maybe you instead lower your elbow to your knee knowingthat is as far as your body wants to go and you carry no self-judgmentregarding the place you are at in your own practice relative toothers, knowing the benefits you experience are exactly the same. Wemerely want to free the body from the armor of tension which locksinto us as a result of daily life, we need not look like the cover ofYoga Journal for this to happen. What we seek through yoga is aphysical release so that our mind and body can be free to feel what itis that we truly are, without any thoughts or attributes. And what wetruly are, in our deepest core, when we peel away all of the layers oflife which have built up around us, is peace, unconditional love, thatis, as my teacher says, “being loving for no reason at all” withouthidden agendas.

Yoga is for everyone. Yoga in sanskrit means union. The union of thevarious facets of our personality, our spirituality, our physicalityand our mentality. Because when we are united on the inside, we aremuch better equipped to be united on the outside. When we feelconnected we are more inclined to connect with the world around us ina loving and compassionate way. Breathing deeply and being aware ofour breath is yoga. Walking down the street expressing gratitude forthe nature and beauty around us is yoga. Placing our hand on theforehead of a sleeping child or parent is yoga. Feeling love in ourhearts for another is yoga. And yes, side angle pose is yoga too…but only in so far as it frees us to be able to connect more fully toourselves, each other and the planet.

I encourage you to read the following blogpost from one of myteachers, Peter Ferko, with his thoughts on the article and to reflecton the statement, “Range is of the ego, form is of the soul.”